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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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/ 

A 

Hunt for a Happy Man: 



AND THE 



Mighty Power of Mothers. 



TRANSLATED, OR RATHER PARAPHRASED FROM 

THE FRENCH, WITH VARIATIONS 

AND ADDITIONS, 



BY P. SLAUGHTER, D. D. 



; Oh, Happiness ! our being's end and aim ! 
Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content, whate'er thy name 
That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh, 
For which we bear to live, or dare to die, 
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, 
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool and wise, 
Plant of celestial seed ! if dropped below, 
Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow." 






RICHMOND, VA: 

WM. ELLIS JONES, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER. 
1883. 



H ; 



510 



INSCRIPTION. 



These Autumn Leaves are inscribed to the memory of 
my honored friend, beloved brother, and Right Reverend 
Father in God, 

J. P. B. WILMER, D. D., LL.D., 

Who was " lovely and pleasant in his life," whose death 
was a Translation, and whose Memory is a beautiful and 
blessed Reminiscence — "like the Sweet South," breathing 
through the Orange Groves of his own loving and beloved 
Louisiana. 



A STUDY OF THE ELEMENTS 



Individual and National Happiness. 



A few years ago I conceived the idea of studying France, 
of making myself acquainted with her soil, her monuments, 
her cities, her hamlets and that vast girdle of rivers, seas 
and mountains which is unrolled from the Pyrenees to the 
Alps, from the Mediterranean to the ocean. 

I anticipated much pleasure from this course, and I was 
not disappointed. In the mildest climate I met intelligent 
people, and a singular abundance of all the good things of 
earth. I saw with admiration innumerable vessels enter 
our ports and pour into them the riches of all parts of the 
world. Thousands of wheel carriages distributed them 
here and there, promoting activity and prosperity. 

Here the iron of Norway was heated and softened by the 
hammers of the forges. There, were displayed in tinted 
tissues, the wools of Spain and of Cachmere. A little fur- 
ther, workmen took the cotton of the Indies, spun it, wove 
it and printed upon it every color. I found everywhere old 
cloisters and abbeys transformed into factories, and their 
deep vaults resounding with the songs of the workmen and. 
the perpetual clatter of the steam-engines. I was. charmed 
with such teeming prosperity. What surprised me most 
was the impulse given to the whole country by the educa- 
tion of an insect. From north to south, from Italy to the 
volcanic mountains of Viverais, a caterpillar awakened ac- 
tivity everywhere. At Avignon and Vancluse they strip 



4 A HUNT FOR A HAPPY MAN. 

the cocoons. In Normandy the practiced fingers of the 
women attach the threads to light spindles and cast a 
thousand beautiful figures upon the airy net-work of our 
beautiful blondes. At Etiennes these threads are woven 
into ribbons which are unrolled over the whole surface of 
Europe. At ISTismes they make of them stuffs which rustle 
and shine like metals. At Lyons they are displayed in 
thick velvets, in gauze transparent as air and brilliant as 
snow — in satin, in damask and in lampas. At Paris, silk 
rivals the pencil, even to the reproduction upon sumptuous 
hangings of the chief works of the great masters. 

But these chef-d'ceuvi*es of art — these prodigies of indus- 
try — what are they in comparison with the blessings which 
nature lavishes? We have all climates and all cultures. 
At the north we have the larch and the fir; at the south 
the olive, the citron and the orange — the two extremities of 
the botanic chain. The trees of Persia and of the two 
Americas, are mingled with the foedal ash and oaks of old 
Gaul; the fragrant fruits of Asia with the native apple 
tree; the entire flora of the east with the humble violet, 
the easter-daisy and the mysterious verbena. Thus France 
is covered with the products of the new world and the 
treasures of the old From the height of her hills, covered 
with vines, rivers of wine run perpetually into the mouths 
of all people, while over the broad fields harvests wave like 
the waves of the sea. 

At the sight of so many blessings my heart leaped with 
joy. I exclaimed, "Oh, nimiwn fortunata ! [too happy peo- 
ple!] you have everything — riches, intelligence, liberty. Is 
there on the earth a spectacle comparable to your glory? 
You have stripped yourself of superstitions as one casts off 
his old clothes; no more useless monks, no more caste, nor 
slavery, no more rival and jealous provinces. I see in your 
bosom but one people, and in this people but one family." 
And in saying this I seemed to hear everywhere the hymn 
of gratitude which my own heart was singing. 



A HUNT FOR A HAPPY MAN. 5 

Alas ! I scarce dare write it — in this land of promise, in 
the midst of these families, loaded with blessings which 
should make life sweet and easy, I found only little chil- 
dren, those frail creatures, unconscious as the birds of 
heaven, who seemed truly happy. As to the rest, young 
and old, in town and country, seemed to be burdened with 
an internal malady which left them no repose. From the 
bosom of the fields, the laborer casts upon the towns an 
eye of envy and of hatred. In the midst of his gardens 
and his parks the rich man cried, "3Ie miserable!" — the 
merchant complained of the course of trade, the working- 
man of his wages, the banker of policies, and all bewailed 
their social position. The higher one mounts the more 
bitter are the words, the louder the murmurs. Unbelief 
has entered into the things of earth, as into the things of 
heaven. The physician no longer believes in medicine, the 
judge in the Constitution, the priest in his creed, the soldier 
in glory, the young man in love, nor kings in royalty. To 
cap the climax we are told that it is the wise man (not the 
fool) who says there is no God ; " the Bible is a myth, the 
world is a machine, and man is a monkey. 'Let us eat 
and drink, for to-morrow we die,' and after death, nothing ! " 

This industrious people, who at first sight seemed to me 
but one happy family, on a nearer view now seems but one 
miserable being, who hides under a rich dress the most 
hideous wounds, and ennui, that profound void, under the 
glare of a factitious gaiety. 

Wonder having ceased, an active and burning pity seized 
my soul. I sought the cause of the malady, and I thought 
I found it in the want of education and of leisure. To give 
leisure, what was wanting but to invent machines, to sup- 
plement the strength of men. And for education, to multi- 
ply schools, invent methods of instruction and distribute 
books, magazines and newspapers. Young then, and doubt- 
ing nothing, I went to work. I had made some studies for 



b A HUNT FOR A HAPPY MAN. 

the Polytechnic school, of which I was Professor of History. 
I became a geometrician, mechanician, chemist, &c. I pro- 
cured all the new inventions and multiplied them. In 
thought I saw France covered with railways and her fields 
cultivated without fatigue. I had machines to dig up the 
forests and to cultivate the earth. With a little coal and a 
few drops of water, I lighted the towns, gave coursers to 
our cars, wings to the vessels, fingers to machines. I made 
them spin, weave, forge and print. They produced like 
thinking beings, needles, paper, canon, clothes, furniture 
and thousands of other things, without fatigue. While 
steam worked, man rested and enjoyed himself. 

Leisure being found, it became necessary, for improving 
the mind, to study the systems of instruction and methods 
of education, substituting new ideas for old ones — to prop- 
agate Jacotot Fourier, mutual instruction, &c. 

The most enlightened men took charge of popular educa- 
tion, and I adopted their systems. Thousands of public 
schools were opened, but it was useless to teach people to 
read, without furnishing them with books. Then we set up 
public libraries, printed compact editions of Rousseau and 
other classics for the cottagers, illustrated magazines and 
encyclopedias at two sous. 

Thus exhausted by labor, and seeing my health failing, 
I became restless. I began to fear that I should not enjoy 
the fruit of the tree watered by the sweat of my brow. 
Must I, then, die on the eve of such a beautiful success and 
abandon the idea of seeing France regenerated and happy ? 
I sent for my physician, a conscientious and sensible man, 
and showed him the heap of old dusty papers around me. 
I laid before him at length the cause of my illness, my 
hopes and my fears, and my life wasted with thought. 
"And what does all this mean?" said he with an oblique 
and ironical air. "To regenerate France," I meekly replied. 
"And to accomplish this," he said, "one must have places, 



A HUNT FOR A HAPPY MAX. 7 

power, money and a high position in the world." ''Nothing 
of all that, Doctor." "Be easy, then," said he, "your mal- 
ady is not grave ; a little rest and country air will restore 
you." 

• I settled myself two leagues from Versailles, in a great 
plain whose golden harvests sparkled in the sun. A suite 
of smiling valleys opened before me, whose green meadows 
were prolonged in the distance, between cliffs covered with 
rich culture and crowned by a grove of old chestnut trees. 
Upon the border of these woods rises the beautiful village 
of Chateaufort, with its rural steeples and its Gothic tombs, 
placed like two bastions under the picturesque ruins of the 
castle of Hugues le Cadavre; and in the midst of all this, a 
simple, small house, well shaded, very rustic, and inhabited 
by a family of the olden time, whose friendship offered me 
an asylum. I passed there two long years, occupied with 
my health, and, above all, with my projects — associated my- 
self with all the doings of the philanthropists for the dif- 
fusion of useful knowledge, and encouraging my friends in 
the pursuit of the great work of universal regeneration. 
Thank Grod, the end was not long in coming, but it came 
in direct contradiction to my hopes. 

The more education was diffused, the more the unhappi- 
ness increased; knowledge irritated instead of softening, 
and the evil I could not deny, for it pursued me in my soli- 
tude. The beautiful village had a school with all the 
improvewents of the age, and instruction and leisure should 
have multiplied enjoyment. But, alas! I heard there only 
complaints and regrets. Some old men lamented the loss 
of the lord, who, once a year, used to receive the farmer at 
his table — others, less proud, regretted the monks, who 
distributed soup at the door of the convent ; the aristocrats 
were offended at seeing in the valley the sumptuous parks 
of men who had become rich by trade ; the poor envied the 
rich and demanded an agrarian law, the abolition of taxes, 



5 A HUNT FOR A HAPPY MAN. 

and a Kepublic where all should be on a dead level of 
equality. Finally, young men just out of college declared 
that knowledge and good sense only dated from their com- 
ing into the world, and that the country was — the young 
men — with a profound contempt for all the rest. Such was 
a picture, in miniature, of France. 

This, I said to myself, is a painful experience, and should 
make the advocates of progress pause and think. I found 
that in proportion as intelligence increased riches morality 
was impoverished, and in the empty heads sophisms and 
envy sprung up with thought. Thus I had misunderstood 
France, or misconceived the remedy; I was confounded; my 
first impulse was to burn up the books, tear up the journals, 
annihilate industry, and root up the fatal tree of knowledge. 
I was driven to the extreme of thinking that what is called 
the people, with some peculiar exceptions, were made to 
crawl in baseness and error ; that despots did Avell to terrify 
this indocile animal; that monks had been right to cut him 
off from the number of thinking beings; that it was only 
by keeping them in the chains of ignorance and poverty 
that their bad passions could be subdued, and that they 
must be ruled like the brutes by hunger and fear, since they 
would not be made happy, like the angels, by light and love. 

Full of these thoughts, like another Machisevel I trans- 
formed them into a system, when a singular circumstance 
suddenly modified them. At the bottom of the valley, on 
the right, may be seen to-day an elegant house, so beauti- 
fully situated, that the woods, the hills, the fields and the 
cottage seem like natural accidents to the park and the gar- 
den. Near the house is a village-school, well shaded, whose 
like can only be found in the romances of La Fontaine; 
opposite is a bridge over the brook, overlooked by a mill, 
made as if to please the eye and furnish a subject for the 
landscape painter; then there is a little chapel, where 
reposes under a modest marble monument the lady of the 



A HUNT FOR A HAi ] I iX. 9 

place, who died in the flower of her age, but whose piety 
and beauty have left sweet memories. The group of woods, 
of houses, rural steeple, and two Gothic turrets, form a de- 
lightful scene in the midst of a profound solitude, for the 
road is chiefly trodden by the feet of flocks and herds which 
animate the valleys. 

Every Sunday, warned by the church bell, I attended ser- 
vice. It was a charming sight to see the villagers in their 
simple dress, at the same hour, from all parts of the valley, 
traverse the meadows. It happened, however, that some- 
times I had a companion. He was an old man, whose ar- 
dent and ingenuous piety I never wearied in admiring. 
In spite of his plain clothes, and some indications of his 
being poor, everything in his person expressed a calm, 
which, by an inexpressible charm, passed from his soul to 
mine as I gazed upon him. My curiosity being awakened I 
made some inquiries, and was told that in his old age he 
had lost two brave boys in battle, who would have been his 
stay and comfort. One was killed at Waterloo, and the 
other fell at Beresina, and their mother soon followed 
them. Here he was, old and alone, and not able to work. 
Encouraged by these recitals I sought his company. 

"You must be very lonesome," I said, "without a com- 
panion." 

"How can one be lonesome," said he, with an humble air, 
"who has God for his guest? God has promised to take 
up his abode with those who love Him and keep His com- 
mandments. Kefreshing as congenial company is, one can 
do without it, if need be, who can speak to God, and to 
whom God deigns to speak." 

"But," I continued, "you have need of warmer clothing; 
the winter will be rough ; you should think of it before 
hand." 

"If I could work," he replied, "I would gladly make my 
bread by the sweat of my brow, according to God's com- 



10 A HUNT FOR A HAPPY MAN. 

raands, but in my situation I have no more need of over- 
anxiety than the birds who cannot sow, and the flowers 
which cannot spin. God puts care for me in the hearts of 
good people." 

"Here seems to be a happy man," said I to myself, "and 
I must interrogate him further." 

"Can you read?" said I; "and have you books?" 

"Yes," said he, "I have read many books, and I have a 
library of many books in one — it is the book, beginning at 
the beginning and ending at the end of the world, with a 
few glimpses of the new heavens and the new earth ; but at 
my age one does not read much, one prays." 

"And do you pray often?" 

"Yes; it is a great happiness to pray, and one prays 
often in his heart without uttering words. And often one 
says the Lord's Prayer, which one loves the more, because 
he first learned it from his mother's lips.' 

"And is this all your prayer?" 1 asked. 

"What needs one more?" he replied. "As the Bible is 
many books in one, so is the Lord's Prayer many prayers 
in one. Each petition, if dwelt upon, until one sees and feels 
its meaning, fills the soul, and overflows the earth and time. 
Sometimes after uttering the words, 'Our Father,' I 
pause, and seeing the flocks which come from the fields to 
give us milk, and the sun which rises and sets upon the val- 
1>'\\ I bless God for His light and warmth, which makes the 
grass grow in the meadows. Oh! then I feel that my prayer 
is true, and I have but to think all the evening of the im- 
port of the words, c Our Father.' " 

"And in the bad weather what do you do?" I asked. 

"I look at the clouds which pass across the heavens, 
coming (I know not whence) on the wings of the wind, and 
pouring rain upon the fields, to give us bread and butter and 
honey, neither more nor less than God sees good for us, and 
knowing that man does not live by bread alone, I bless 



A HUNT FOR A L tfk .. 11 

Him for these and for that bread ..uich came down from 
heaven for the redemption and nourishment and solace of 
our souls." 

"But,"' said I (to try him), "some men who call them- 
selves wise men, say there is no God. - ' 

"A blind man," said he, "may deny the sun, and yet the 
sun shines on, and shines upon and blesses the blind man 
who denies Him. The god of this world (not our Father in 
heaven) has blinded the eyes of some men that they cannot 
see things which are revealed unto babes. A man, whose 
eyes are open, sees Grod even in a blade of grass, which the 
earth bears, and which the air and the rains and the sun 
nurses. Can the wise men see the milk and honey lying 
hid in the grass, and the bloom which the bee and the cattle 
find strewn into the food which nourishes them and us ? 
Only an All-wise, Almighty and All-G-ood Grocl could have 
made such provision. No wonder the sweet Psalmist called 
upon all the works of the Lord, from the greatest to the 
least, to praise Him ; for He spake the word, and they were 
made, and gave them a law, which has never been broken. 
."No; our Father will live forever. Men cannot kill Him 
as they killed my poor boys." 

In speaking thus, the old man's eyes were filled with 
tears, he bowed his head, and I heard him murmur in a low 
tone, as if continuing his prayer. 

"My poor Bertrand," he resumed, after a moment of 
silence, " he was the youngest, and was killed at Waterloo, 
crying, 'Vive Napoleon.' Ah! if he had cried 'Vive our 
Father who art in heaven,' he might have been living now. 
And my poor wife, who went down sorrowing to her grave, 
I might not have lost her ; but it was the will of our 
Father who art in heaven, and I bless Him. 'The Lord 
gave and He hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the 
Lord.' And now I know this prayer is true." 



12 A i, T R A HAPPY MAN. 

"You ought," I "said, "to come nearer the village, you 
are too lonely here." 

"Ah," he replied, "I cannot leave this house — here I saw 
my children horn, and their mother die, and God has said 
C I will never leave you, nor forsake you,' and his angels 
minister to me." 

"And you are content with your lot?" I said. 

"How could I be otherwise? It is God's will, and I pray 
every day that God's will may 'be done on earth as it is 
clone in heaven.'" 

Thus was discovered to me the secret of happiness. He 
who merges his will in the will of God, has found the 
long sought philosopher's stone, which turns all it touches 
into gold. He becomes a co-worker with God, and all 
things in heaven and earth do His will. 

"Oh, you deserve to be still more happy," I said, "my 
brave, good man. Here, take this purse, and pray for me, 
for me who have had no such trials as you, and who dare 
not say I am happy like you." 

"And is it that one gives prayers for money?" he said, 
with emotion. 

I felt that I had wounded him. "Pardon me," I cried, 
" I was only like the rest of the world, making a self- 
interested offering." I seized his pious hands, which I 
pressed with a holy respect. I then went away with a 
heart full of emotion, and as I went I heard him say — 

" I will pray for you and for your children, if you have 
any who do not yet know how to pray for themselves." 

It is said of the great astronomer, Tycho-Brahe, that 
one night, in going from his observatory, he suddenly 
found himself surrounded by a tumultuous crowd, who 
filled the public grounds. Inquiring the cause of this 
great concourse, they showed him in the constellation of 
the Sevan, a brilliant star, which he, aided by the best tel- 






A HUNT FOR A II . '.' 13 

escope, had not yet seen. Such aij the incidents which 
humble wise men and advance science. My situation was 
very like that of the great astronomer. A poor old man 
had shown me the star which I had vainly sought for so 
many years. 

Yes, I was deceived; it is not industry, nor science, nor 
machines, nor hooks which can make a nation happy. Cer- 
tainly all these things are useful in their places, and it 
should be the care of legislators to propagate and multiply 
them; but if content with developing the intelligence whose 
sphere is wholly material, you neglect to develop the soul, 
the divine element of humanity — instead of a happy peo- 
ple, you will see around you but a multitude, restless in its 
unbridled passions — a multitude tortured by a double need 
of rising and of knowing, and these sublime instincts will 
be their tormentors. 

You have pointed their eyes to the earth ; they attach 
themselves to it in the midst of riches and pleasures 
whose pursuit exhaust without satisfying them. Why do 
you not first lift their eyes to heaven, and show them the 
way that leads to its open gates ? The soul only can see 
God, and once awakened, discerns with surprise the end 
of the desires which had deceived it, and of the ambitions 
which had led it astray The best educated and most 
prosperous, if not the most religious, will never be the 
king-people. 

The example of an old man, happy in his poverty, calm 
in his afflictions, had led me to the source of good and of 
evil. Our earthly passions is the tree of knowledge ; they 
materialize us if the soul does not make them divine. I 
perceive now that the isolated developments of the intelli- 
gence have increased instead of destroying the moral evil 
in the world, which is the cause of unhappiness here and 
hereafter. What more frightful spectacle can there be than 



14 y m A HAPPY MAN. 

that of an active as i vigorous people struggling with 
each other for riches, honors, pleasures and social position, 
within the brazen walls of a false glory and selfish ego- 
tism, living without God in the world and without hope 
beyond it. 

This spectacle we see in the world because the religious 
thought is wanting, and the religious thought is wanting, 
mainly, because mothers forget to put it into the hearts of 
their children in the cradle and the nursery. For, as said 
great Jean Paul Kichter, " all first things last forever with 
a child, and though man should circumnavigate the globe, 
he will be less influenced by all that he has seen and heard 
than by his nurse." 

The first Napoleon, seeing France sunk in sensuality and 
unbelief, said one day to Madam Oampan, "The old systems 
of education are worth nothing; what is wanting to the 
better bringing up of the young in France?" "Mothers," 
she responded. The suggestion pleased the Emperor, his 
brow beamed with thought for a moment, and he exclaimed, 
" Here is a system of education in one word. Madam, let 
it be your mission to make mothers who know how to rear 
their children." 

The god of nature is wise; he does not confide us at our 
birth to the care of a pedagogue or of a philosopher, but to 
the love and the caresses of a mother. He surrounds our 
cradle with the most gracious forms and the sweetest 
sounds — for the sweet voice of woman is sweeter still, when 
she modulates it to the ear of her infant. 

Nature lavishes everything that is charming upon our 
infancy. We go to sleep upon a mother's bosom, are 
awaked by her kisses and inspired by her love. Religion 
is not at first a creed, but an inspiration, and the heart of 
the mother is the first and purest organ through which it 
passes to the heart of the child; patience responds to curi- 



A HUNT FOR A H. !' Mittf. 15 

osity, mildness to petulance, and such ire the contrasts and 
the harmonies that the two reasons seem to grow together. 

Man comes afterwards, and breaks this chain of love. 
The smile of the mother is succeeded by the frown of a 
master. Expelled from this paradise, the child goes to bed 
without embracing his mother; he rises without hearing 
that gentle voice which called him to prayer. She is not 
there to pray with him. Years pass, and the tendrils of his 
affections too often either creep on the earth, or are twined 
around other objects, and he comes back to his home — his 
purity not always, but too often, soiled, his mind sophisti- 
cated by false reasonings, and his heart intoxicated with 
illusions. Most great and good men have derived their first 
impulse towards good from their mothers. Nothing lingers 
in our memories like those hours when our mothers joined 
our little hands together, kneeling at her knees, and taught 
us to say, " Our Father who art in Heaven." This echo of 
the maternal voice comes back to us in our hours of grief 
and of gloom like the strains of far off music. 

In the cemetery of Mount Parnassus is a tomb with this 
touching inscription : 

"Best in -peace, oh ! my mother, y'r son ivill always obey 



Oh! mothers, if you had but a glimpse of the marvels of 
maternal influence, with what ardor would you enter a 
career which nature has opened to you. Most men are over- 
whelmed in the whirlpool of business and of politics. The 
fate of generations to come is mainly in your hands. The 
hearts of your children are laid before you like a blank 
sheet, of paper, to write upon it the rudiments of its history. 
What I can only put on this cold paper you can engrave 
with the pen of the diamond forever. You who make so 
many sacrifices, and descend to the humblest details for the 



16 lUNT FOR A HAPPY MAN. 

health of the body mil you, can you, hesitate when the 
unconscious soul of your helpless child cries for the light 
and the bread and the water of life ? 

The education of the body and of the mind is sure to be 
cared for by others. But who will care for the soul if the 
mother does not? This much, at least, every mother can 
do. She can see that the frail bark, with its precious treas- 
ure, does not leave the home port and be launched upon the 
sea of life without a compass and without a chart ; and she 
can point the young pilot to that star in the heavens by 
which he must steer his course if he would not be drawn 
into the whirlpool or dashed against the rocks, to which so 
many sirens lure the unwary with their bewitching songs. 



A 

Hunt for a Happy Man: 



AND THE 



Mighty Power of Mothers. 



TRANSLATED, OR RATHER PARAPHRASED FROM 

THE FRENCH, WITH VARIATIONS 

AND ADDITIONS, 



BY P. SLAUGHTER, D. D. 



" Oh, Happiness ! our being's end and aim ! 
Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content, whate'er thy name 
That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh, 
For which we hear to live, or dare to die, 
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, 
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool and wise, 
Plant of celestial seed ! if dropped below, 
Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow." 



RICHMOND, VA: 

WM. ELLIS JONES, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER. 
I88 3 . 






ilillSirSfflS* 



021 897 413 2 




■ 




